


Sharp & Pointy

by Liffis



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Famous, FC Augsburg - Freeform, Ficlet Collection, Focus on Friendships, Gen, M/M, crack and banter, swordfighting&archery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-29
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-10-25 12:01:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10763868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liffis/pseuds/Liffis
Summary: From the outside it always looks a bit assholish, the way they treat eachother. No doubt about it. But seriously, coddling is useless - they've all seen eachother at low points. Be it in a battle when they stood next to eachother while the enemy came charging at them and they all knew they stood...about zero chances of winning. Or when they afterwards cried at the pitch black bruises while they all hunted for the last pots of ointment. Or when they are all a miserable, stinky mess on the way home after a long, rainy tournament. Or after a tournament in the sweltering hot summer sun. They've been through a lot, and in the end their hobby does consist of hitting or poking stuff or other people with sharp and pointy metal sticks. After a certain point you just quit dilly-dallying around and get to the point, because let's be real, in the midst of battle you don't havetimefor being nice to your best friends.(AU: they are not famous footballers but instead pretty normal people who, in their spare time, do swordfighting and archery)





	1. Is That A Tentpole In Your Pants (Or Did The Woodworm Bite You)

**Author's Note:**

> So this idea was born by Contra, who poked me and went "Hey, why didn't you write the thing yet?", because I am myself into swordfighting and archery. So, yeah. Here is the thing. Very cracky. A bit inspired by real-life stuff, but not too much, I basically only took the feeling and tried to get it into words.  
> Basically swordfighting looks super badass but if you actually get into it, it's really not. Mostly it's just huge talks about "shit, my [part of protection gear] broke so I can't practise today :(((" or "omg I got a new [weapon]/fixed my shield - wanna fight??" and basically everyone wants to hit everyone (including slapping butts with the broad side of your sword/axe when they're not looking), but that's it. It's actually a really fun hobby.
> 
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> Completely not true and all of it made up, not saying anything about the actual real footballers.

The crash is what wakes him up, and before he’s even fully aware, all he can think is: _Not again_. Two years ago the very same thing had happened – crash in the the night, a horde of screaming Romans bursting into their tents, jolting them from asleep to fully battle ready in less than two seconds.

Dani’s quite sure he still has bruises on his body somewhere from that particular assholery. Seriously, who _did_ that, they hadn’t agreed on that before the Battle, and yes, there are always shenanigans going on, but waking people like this? After a six-hour long fight in sweltering sun? And they joked about ‘dirty mud-eaters raised in pig stalls in the middle of nowhere’. Go figure.

Ever since, he – and everyone in their group – slept with their shield and weapons next to their bed. And with their phones safely tucked away. Just to be extra safe.

Thing is: the crash sounds exactly like that, so he’s pretty much vertical and halfway out of his tent, sword in hand, left hand still grappling with the shield belt. 

Going by the clamour, so is everyone else –

But then there’s cursing. 

Dutch cursing. Coming from his left. 

He lowers his sword and squints into the dark. The fire has burned almost completely to ambers and they omit no light beyond a faint glow. 

The cursing gets louder and more heartfelt. 

And Dani may not speak a single lick of Dutch, but he _does_ know Paul well, so –

“You still alive?”, he calls out and lays down his shield, next to the entrance, and the sword on top of that.

“Barely”, Paul says, and then curses some more, for good measure. 

By now most are awake and puttering around, and some have even lit their lamps. Thankfully not everyone has taken the Responsible Solution of terracotta lamps or torches – the bright shine of a modern lamp is so much better to make out what happened. 

Which is basically: Paul’s and Matze’s tent has broken down. Clear split of the middle log, the stump barely taller than Paul himself. _How_ the everloving _fuck_. 

Matze is just sitting in front of the tent and shrugs at him.

“I told him there were these tiny holes in the wood.”, he explains, and when Paul dramatically throws open the latch to glower at him, he shrinks back and just wide-eyedly hides behind his shield. 

It’d be more dramatical if he wasn’t just fighting with a tiny-ass buckler, to be honest, but eh. 

“Now what?”, Marwin asks, and it trails off into a yawn.

Dani smiles as Marwin’s arm wrap around him and Marwin kisses his neck. He still smells like sleep. And slightly like sheep, but that probably can’t quite be helped at the moment, what with the sheep skins on their bed rolls and all.

“Ask your boyfriend to be our tent-pole”, Paul shoots back, and whatever he’s trying to do in the mountains of tent linen, it is not successful, because Dani can hear the grumbling from where he’s standing. 

“Ask yours to fuck you less enthusiastically”, he just answers, and against his neck, Marwin’s lips twitch and curve into a smile. 

“I didn’t –“, Matze starts, and his face is bright red.

“But we’re – tomorrow there’s a battle, you can’t just –“, Dominik interrupts him and makes a hand gesture that is probably supposed to imply something. Dani’s not sure. It does, however, mean Dominik’s waving around the lamp like something else.

“They can and actually have”, Marwin lazily drawls, “Remember Gdansk?”

If possible, Matze’s face grows even redder and he pointedly says nothing.

“Wait, you actually fuck after battles? After battles with the Poles, even? How?”, Philipp pipes in, “How do you even get it up after that?” 

“You don’t, you just rut against eachother and hope you’ll come before you’ll fall asleep.”, Dani says, and…actually that’s about it, for most battles. You were just so done with everything in life after a battle, doubly so after the Poles. Man, those were crazy, that was sure. Whatever people did in Poland, it sure was effective, Jesus. If Dani never has to fight against Poles ever again, he’ll be a very glad man. So how Paul managed to have sex after that fight, that’s still a mystery to him. One of which he would not like details, thank you very much, the noises were enough.

“So basically it’s like your usual sex life, Dani”, and Paul, the fucker, high-fives his boyfriend after that. 

“Well, at least the only tents we managed to destroy were those in our pants.”, Marwin drawls.

Dani has to bite his lower lip at that, very heavy, so he just won’t say anything - and tries to high-five his own boyfriend, but Marwin doesn’t move his hands, keeping them on Dani’s stomach.

Paul just drops the splinters of the tent pole next to his shield. Accusingly, even. How can one do that when he’s wearing – what _is_ he even wearing? It’s going to fall off his hips any second now, and Dani appreciates muscles, okay, and Paul is his oldest friend, except he does _not_ need that visual. Ever. 

“You’re sickening.”, Paul states, looking at him and the way Marwin is nestled against his neck, and grabs Matze’s light axe. His other hand pulls up the trousers, but too late.

“And you’re kinda wearing rubber ducky shorts so it’s kinda difficult to take that serious.”, Philipp chimes in.

For that, he gets one of Paul’s patented glowers, but all it does is make Philipp shrug and grab Dominik’s hand.

“Want me to hold that?”, he quietly asks but Dominik just shakes his head. His trousers are, despite the rude awakening, perfectly belted, sword and all. Nerd.

And, damn. They do grow up quickly, the small ones. Dani still remembers how they both had looked like, one and a half years ago: very nervous, Philipp less so than Dominik, and how they’d both struggled their way through basic training. And now they were both here, quite good at what they were doing, both more than capable of holding their own, even in a line fight in the midst of battle. Even Dominik, who at first had seemed so reluctant to even so much as hold a sword was one of them. 

Although – and that Daniel would never say to Dominik’s face – the tiny letter opener he called his sword did look ridiculous. Like he’d die the very first second of battle. Which was not true, but still. 

Dani still caught himself snickering at the sword, despite knowing better. 

“Now that we’re all done gossiping like fishermen’s wives, can we maybe solve this?”

Matze raises from the little shemel but doesn’t quite step close to Paul.

“Are we actually talking about fishermen’s wives now?”, he asks, and although this would be perfect to start another round of chirping at Paul and the hypothetically-fucked-to-destruction tent pole, Dani keeps quiet. 

As does Marwin, although Daniel can feel the soft snickering against his shoulder. Philipp and Max just cough quietly, respectively. 

Because chirping yes, but not about things like these – they all know how hard the past months had been on Paul and Matze. At different ends of Germany, Augsburg and Hamburg too far of a distance to meet more than once every two or three months, and the calls or messages could never fully make up the rest. It’d been harsh, the time, and it would be still some time until Matze would finish his stay in Hamburg and return to Augsburg. 

There are things they can easily joke, but fishermen’s wives would hit a bit too close to home, too much of a painful truth. 

 

In the end, they manage to dig up some ropes between all of them and then they string some parts of the tent to branches and the other tent poles. Enough so Paul and Matze can at least sleep the rest of the night without worrying the tent will smother them in linen. And in the morning, they’re going to get this checked out, when the sun is shining and they can properly see what exactly has gone wrong and what they could do to fix it.


	2. Chapter 2

Marwin has met Dani when he himself had still been fighting with the other Romans, full armour and all. At first the Vikings had been their cause of perpetual jokes, and during fights they always bantered, all of them. And Marwin had never spent any more thoughts on that: Romans were one thing, Vikings another, and they never really mixed a lot, preferring to stay with their lot. 

But then one Battle had offered other competitions next to the actual battle: knife-throwing and archery, among other things, so Marwin had gone there. At first only for fun and to watch: he did want to see how others did it, and wanted to talk to them, to learn from them, if possible. At home he didn’t have anyone to train with; basically taught himself in his backyard. And yes, he could hit a bulls eye, but that didn’t mean his actual technique was good.

So he’d gone, and there’d be this Viking. _The small one_ , was what Marwin had first noticed about Daniel, and the second thing was: _the one with the axe and the sword_. In battle, Marwin had fought against him, at first confused how someone would actually fight without a shield – but barely a few seconds later, his gladius was locked in that axe, and a moment later he caught a clean killing blow against his ribs. And damn, that bruise had been purpling already when Marwin had taken off his lorica to peek at his skin.

What a fighter with an axe – and now the man was carrying a bow like it was a part of him, just an extension of his arm, nothing else. If anything, he looked to be in his element, even more so than on the battle grounds. 

The way the Viking shot was pure art. 

Marwin had no idea about archery except for how most archers didn’t look like much, less trained as they were. And yeah, it did look cool to shoot arrows, but in the end, those were just small wooden picks, and in a battle that could not be used anyways, due to its risks. So, what use was archery?

Except there was this guy and suddenly Marwin understood a lot. 

Because this was weirdly erotic. Those arms, flexing like that. Marwin hadn’t known he was this much into arms, except here he was. The relaxed calm the man was radiating – breathing in, breathing out, pulling the bow to rest his hand under his jaw. The soft snick of the bow string releasing. And the way his muscles corded and bunched when he raised his bow, pulled the string, the intense focus of his eyes, transfixed on the target. His hips, too, with that belt slung low on them. 

Marwin had missed the knife throwing in favour of watching.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Small primer on terms and stuff mentioned in this chapter:  
> \- **Viking/Roman** : Basically categories of swordfighting - you always fight in a certain style. Lots of people start with Viking, because it is extremely broad and allows for a multitude of weaponry and armour, while still emphasizing fighting on your own. Some branch out after that to more specialised/nuanced subforms/times/cultures of swordfighting (i.e. long swords, Celtic,...). Roman is very much the opposite of Viking fighting: it only works in a group to maintain Roman fighting styles, the strength of these techniques lie in the number of people, you are trained as a member of the group, and individual fighting is not emphasized, both weaponry and armour are largely standardized. As such, Roman swordfighting is rarer. - The amount of differences also means that at least the Vikings are not the biggest fans of Roman fighting, so to speak.  
> \- **Axe and sword (no shield)** : totally an option for fighting, but recommended only after you Know Your Swordfighting. A shield is standard, and worn in your non-dominant hand - you move this hand a bit less and need less precision than with your dominant, active weapon carrying hand (the one used to hit the opponent). The shield is your defense and your main job in sword fighting: as long as you are not hit, you are still in the fight. To give up a shield in favour of another active weapon means you either a) are completely bonkers, b) have a death wish, c) know your shit so hard and are so fearless you just go "eh, whatever" at everything in a fight that is not an actual fire-spitting dragon.   
> \- **Archery at home** : yes, legal and possible - BUT you need to secure the environment. Read: you need to make sure no one else can be injured. (Going by German law. If in doubt, please look up the actual law of your country!) For archery, depending on your level, you need a minimum of 15 metres, usual would be between 30-45 metres, and if you wanna train yourself to become a jackshot: 60+ metres are your way to go for a target.   
> \- **Gladius** : typical Roman sword, carried with one hand - as are most weapons. Weapons that are carried with two hands (or those that can be carried with one hand) usually come without an accompanying shield.  
> \- **Killing blow** : not actually lethal!!! In swordfighting, lethal blows are those that take you out of the battle, and that varies by the kind of codex you fight (codex = set of swordfighting rules How To Properly Swordfight). Most typical killing blows are: slices against the body and upper arms and thighs (swords are NOT sharp so no actual blood). NO stabbing, no hits against the throat/head; hits on other parts will not count as a killing blow and thus allow the opponent to keep fighting. After you have caught one (or other amount of beforehandedly agreed on) killing blow, you loudly say "Out" or something else to vocally make it known you are not participating any longer, and then you step back from the fight. You may not be hit by anyone else after that and may not hit either.  
> \- **Not using archery in battle** : due to the fact today's battles are not meant to kill or injure people, archery proposes too big of a security risk. Archery just knows two settings, basically: either it's a miss and has no consequences - or it's a hit and you're out of commission for the foreseeable future. Too risky, so no archery it is.   
> \- **Less trained archers** : archery demands a lot of shoulder and arm strength, and a good stance - swordfighting, however, is more focused on the whole body. Archery tends to be static (unless you're actively pursuing archery while riding/running/jumping, which is rarer by itself!), whereas swordfighting needs the whole body: arms, shoulders, core strength, thighs, calves, excellent stance.


End file.
